delivered to you (wrapped in cellophane)
by Glockenspielium
Summary: there's quite a few things she can't work out how to say (post season three episode three)


_Look at me I'm such a basket case_  
 _Delivered to you wrapped in cellophane_  
 _Waiting on your doorstep, every day_  
 _Delivery, a basket filled with pain_

She forgot to mention that she doesn't know the way back to her room. Not from the lab, not from the dining hall - when she's left alone to shower, the immense seduction of clean water and privacy is superseded by her realisation that she doesn't know how they got here and won't know how to return once she's finished. Whether he realises it or not, taking her hand and walking her back to the room, his constant support and presence is both her salvation and her greatest crutch.

She forgot to mention that when she first woke, she thought her skin had been peeled away while she slept. The uncanny sensation of a layer lost was soon enough attributable to the removal of a filmy layer of grime and dust that had accumulated, despite her best attempts to wash it away, to which her skin and sensory neurons had acclimatised. They had tried to clean her while awake, but the stimulation proved too great (or so she's told, later on). Furthermore, it had been apparently essential for her to be clean, which was confusing and incorrect. The sheets had slid over her shins, her forearms, and she'd screamed until they sedated her again, a terror born mostly from confusion and the concept that she'd finally been caught and her torture had begun.

She forgot to mention that she can't always remember their names. It was easier to leave all that behind - not forgotten, never forgotten, but names bring meaning and memories, and tears. It was easier to focus on the next meal, the next sleep, the next time she would find something safe to drink. She knows their names (and Daisy, Daisy now), and they are there, safely tucked behind astrophysics and fourth grade survival skills class, and sometimes they emerge on command, but other times the words stumble at her teeth and stay trapped behind a tempestuous tongue, and they smile and sympathise and she hates every second of it.

She forgot to mention that her mouth aches every time she eats. The food provided is soft and nutritious and most certainly what she needs, in terms of regulating her metabolism and regaining muscle strength and bone density. She knows this, because she is (was) the one who designed the program, for agents returning from the field, from extreme locations and distant postings. She designed it for any operative left without sufficient nutrition for more than three weeks, and it became protocol, particularly given that specialists are prone to poor self-care when they believe they can muscle through anything. She remembers designing it to accommodate for all possible losses, but never considered that she would one day taste the fruits of her work. She also never considered that, after considerable lengths of disuse, the teeth, the gums, the masseter muscles and the tongue, are not accustomed to chewing. She never considered that the only food available for that duration of time (alone) might be liquid form, or softened to reduce the heartburn and bilious vomiting that the first solid meal after two months provided; so how could she have known that chewing even the softest carbohydrate compounds could prove a challenge?

She forgot to mention that when they left her in the infirmary, they left the cupboard unlocked, and by the time they came back with the test results, her pockets had already been filled. She may be traumatised but she's still a biochemist, she can still read. They gave her enough to sleep with; dousing the periphery of her consciousness with cotton wool, weighing down her body until she's almost pinned to the bed with heaviness, unable to talk, unable to run. To their credit, she does sleep most nights. She sleeps for long enough to bring it all back, but hyper-real and heightened, her legs too slow to get away, no trees to climb, no quarries to hide in, but instead, an endless expanse to be hunted across, until she's petrified enough to wake screaming - only to find that her lips are unyielding and her larynx is sedate - they give her enough to sleep with, but she takes enough to escape.

She forgot to mention that she found the box, hidden in the back of the third drawer beside his bed, open but not still filled with surgical blades.

She forgot to mention how she knew precisely why he'd need to hide them there.

She forgot to mention that she cant work her phone, not yet. The screen glares daggers through her eyes, impaling her retina with relentless, burning light. Every touch heralds swelling sounds, sounding sirens in her ears, filling her mind and sending her swimming, until she can finally muster the coordination to seize the damn thing and launch it at the brick wall opposite her. Watching the screen shatter into thousands of splintered shards, splayed across the floor, the bench, irrevocably destroyed, is not the least bit satisfying. When she no longer looks as if she's been crying, she leaves the room and finds Daisy, and thanks her for the suggestion but admits that she isn't quite up to calling her parents, not yet.

And later, once he's cleared up her foolish mess, neatly disposing of the evidence, when he finds her curled up beside the bed, the familiar ache of the hard floor far more comfortable and relaxing than the cushioned embrace of any mattress, gently giving way to her pointed curves, ensnaring her in sickly soft safety, suffocating, overwhelming - when he crumbles to the floor beside her, his thighs her beaten pillow, his hands rhythmically reminding her why she came back; she might forget to mention that she can't stay here, not anymore.

 _Look at me I'm such a basket case_  
 _While I fall apart, you'll hide all my pills again_  
 _And all the things I need to hear you say_  
 _You'll watch as all my thoughts get right back on the train_


End file.
